Posted on 11/01/2014 6:43:31 AM PDT by massmike
It's become the mother of all political clichés: Every election, we are told, is the most important of our lifetime. If our side doesn't win, it's 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, rivers and seas boiling, human-sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria – or worse.
While it's hard to rank these biennial slug-fests, given the rot that's eating away at the soul of our nation, 2014 is right up there.
Will there be any break on Obama's increasingly despotic reign during his last two years in office, or will Harry Reid and his cohorts continue to provide cover for the presidential putsch?
Most analysts are predicting the 2014 election will give Republicans a slight majority in the Senate next year. The New York Times gives the GOP a 64% chance of taking the Senate.
But nothing is guaranteed. The outcome could depend on last-minute spending, which party has the better ground game, and how much fraud the party of illegal aliens and the graveyard vote can get away with.
Starting with 45 seats, Republicans need to pick up six more to gain a bare majority. Two open seats currently held by Democrats are considered likely pick-ups. The Democratic incumbent in Louisiana will probably lose. Of the nine toss-ups, three are currently Republican seats. If Republicans hold those and take the three they're slated to win, they'll need only one of six toss-ups.
That only sounds easy. In Colorado, Republican Cory Gardner has a one-point lead over incumbent Senator Mark Udall. In Iowa, Republican Joni Ernst leads her opponent by 2.2 points. In Arkansas, the Republican challenger leads the incumbent Democrat by 2 points – all within the margin of error.
With so much at stake this year, the toss-ups could well be squeakers. In the meantime, we're getting lectures from conservatives castigating 2012 stay-at-homes.
"Why did we lose in 2012?" asks the typical e-mail I get at least daily. "Because millions of delusional, self-defeating conservatives, who were disappointed by Romney, were AWOL on Election Day, they helped to re-elect the man who's destroying our Republic.'"
This argument relieves the Republican establishment from all responsibility for nominating a clunk like Romney, and Mitt from practically throwing away the nomination by running an abysmal campaign.
Still, this year at least, voting Republican as the default position makes sense.
Unless the GOP candidate has you running for the toilet bowl (like Charlie Baker, RINO candidate for Massachusetts governor, whose bucket list includes performing a partial-birth abortion while simultaneously presiding over a same-sex wedding), conservatives should vote Republican, even if it hurts. I did in 2008 and 2012, though the experience was excruciating, I can assure you.
Let's start with a hard case – Scott Brown, former Massachusetts Senator now running for the Senate as a Republican in New Hampshire.
During his two years in the Senate, Brown (who won a special election in 2010 with Tea Party support) was a huge disappointment. His rating from the American Conservative Union was 50% – one of the lowest for any Republican Senator.
On the other hand, according to the Congressional Quarterly, his opponent, incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, voted with the president 98% of the time. She is Obama's Topo Gigio. ("Oh, Barack, I love you!") The latest CNN poll has them in a statistical dead-heat – Shaheen 49%, Brown 47%, with a margin of error plus or minus 4.
The choice isn't between an authentic conservative and a typical Democrat, but a 50% conservative and a 98% hard-core leftist. Representing conservative New Hampshire, Brown would probably have a better voting record than he did as the junior senator from the Bay State.
More importantly, he'll be part of the Republican Senate majority. That means the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee passes from Patrick Leahy (lifetime ACU rating 6%) to Charles Grassley (lifetime ACU rating 83%).
It also means no more rubber-stamping of Obama's judicial mutants – no more Sonia ("wise Latina woman") Sotomayors. Ruth Bader Ginsberg – 81, ailing and having an unnatural relationship with the Constitution – won't wait to see who's elected president in 2016, but will likely retire next year. Only a Republican Senate will stop Obama from filling the vacancy with a Ginsberg-clone 30 years her junior.
Grassley is eager to launch investigations to compliment House inquiries – including Fast and Furious and the IRS harassment of conservatives.
Conservative hero Jeff Sessions will chair the powerful Budget Committee. Expect renewed attacks on ObamaCare and proposals for a sweeping overhaul of the federal tax system.
Bob Corker (the kindest thing he can say about Obama is that he's an "unreliable ally") gets the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and John McCain will chair Armed Services. Besides a push for new weapons systems, look for hearings on Obama's blunders which helped to foster the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
With both houses in Republican hands, Obama will get writer's cramp using his veto pen. If contested programs are riders on appropriations bills, the president will have to explain why he risked shutting down the government over the Keystone Pipeline – because it's crucial to maintain our dependence on Middle East oil?
Here's how the Deadites view the prospect of a Republican Senate.
In an opinion column in the October 21 Washington Post ("The Catastrophe that a GOP-controlled Congress would bring") Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, sputters:
"What happens when they (the Republican majority in Congress) send him a bill to prevent a default on our debt at the 11th. hour, attached to a bill that ravages (reforms) Social Security? The Republican Party will gain the power to force the president to choose between impossible options."
Even though self-styled progressives think Obama hasn't moved far enough toward a Soviet America, Vanden Heuvel writes: "It is madness to suggest that little will change if Republicans take the Senate. A lot will change, and the change will be the worse for women, immigrants, workers and the environment" (feminists, illegal aliens and global-warming cultists). "A Republican Senate, working with a Republican House, will be a wrecking crew."
If only.
Still, the alternative to a GOP victory in this year's Senate elections is more judicial nominations from Hell, the continued implementation of ObamaCare (millions more losing their private insurance), a sweeping amnesty (with crime, disease, unemployment and terrorism for all), taking a civil-liberties approach to containing Ebola, and accelerating attacks on Israel by the Grand Mufti of D.C.
It will also mean that Democrats will have won three of the last four elections – sending the GOP into 2016 dispirited and disorganized.
Winston Churchill said of England's victories over the Nazis in 1942: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
I've been disappointed too often by the GOP to expect much from a Republican Congress. But the end of the beginning is better than the alternative—the unimpeded march toward the abyss of hope and change.
See my posts 14 and 23 on this thread for a review of Mississippi election law regarding Senate vacancies..
If people really expect Cochran to resign within a year, then it makes sense to vote FOR him so a special election would be called within 90 days. That would give McDaniel another shot at running, if he chooses to do so.
Voting for Childers means waiting 6 years to take the seat back from the Democrats.
-PJ
This is an issue we can shove down their throats, despite the obvious cover the media will TRY to give them.
For 50 years they’ve been SCREAMING for “separation of church and state”.
We have 50 years of their whining, bellyaching, kvetching we can play back to them.
See, here's the thing: JRandomFreeper isn't talking about Democrat/Republican control of the Senate, but liberty/liberal (more accurately statist
) control.
His underlying argument, rephrased, is this: What good is it if I change (D) to (R) if the candidates are ideologically the same and neither represents me?
You have stated that you are part of the problem and would rather have the RATS in control than your ideal, perfect Conservative.
No, I don't believe that is the case.
Look at what the Republican party is promising: amnesty, no fighting against ObamaCare, etc.
Look at the things they could have enjoyed popular/"bipartisan" support from the electorate on: pursuing/punishing IRS targeting, pursuing/punishing NSA spying, and pursuing/punishing the IRS's asset forfeiture practices (though this would have to be publicized).
But what have they really done?
Johnny, I have agree with you on many occasions, but your position here, at this precarious point in our nation's history, a turning point where we can vote for a less-than perfect candidate and start to turn our nation away from socialist hell, cannot be justified.
How?!
How is electing people who have said that they want exactly the same things that the other guy
wants going to change things away from that goal?
Your assertion here is completely unfounded.
We had our chance in the primary and didn't prevail. Okay, the GOPe screwed us. Now, we need to vote out the RATS next week, and then go after the GOPe between now and 2016.
Why!?
Why would you reward them with victory who, in your own words, screwed us
?
It makes zero sense.
One enemy at a time, Johnny...unlike Sergeant York, we need to shoot the one closest to us first.
Wouldn't those closest to us be those enemies who are wearing the same uniform
?
>> Even as the Republican party signals its favor of amnesty?
>
> Well that’s not a good thing - but it seems to be waning.
Is that really the case, or is it your hopeful wishing?
> But if you want to live in a miserable single issue universe, knock yourself out.
It’s not a single issue, but this is one issue I won’t compromise on as I believe that amnesty to the invaders is an act of Treason as defined by the Constitution.
I hear you.
It’s a sad state.
>> Perhaps they’d just throw you in jail or sic bureaucrats on you...
>
> The Founding Fathers risked their lives and livelihoods for an uncertain outcome. Should we do less?
If that’s the case, then why not jump to rope and lampposts? — It would be a far more effective way to show the politicians that we are not amused and that they will be held to account for their treasons and other lawless behavior.
If they pass amnesty, and “both sides” indicate they want to, that may be the only way to get their attention.
This is some incremental progress! Let’s keep doing this over and over again!
Nixon
Ford
Reagan ***
Bush
Dole
Bush
McCain
Romney
yes, but you’re gonna get an amnesty shoved up your ass by Obama that will make even the worst Republican plans look good. Then we’ll see how compromised you feel.
You can grow up and learn that or not. I can explain it to you but I can’t understand it for you.
Those that advocate voting for Childers have no idea for what they are wishing. Cochran is despicable for his actions during the primary and his voting record is almost as liberal as a Kennedy Democrat but I can guarantee that Childers will make Cochran look like a far right Conservative. Childers ties and previous actions are a harbinger of what is in store if he is elected.
.
- a few years ago on a Free Republic sidebar poll - over 15% said they would vote for Hillary
- Trolls as Stealth FR members abound on FR and elsewhere
- Mark Levin and Glenn Beck ignore the fact that leaving Harry Reid in power of the US Senate - nothing will be done and tyrants will control the US Congress -
- vote as you wish or stay home
- just shut up for the next 2-4-6-8-12-14-16 etc. years
- unlike most people on FR I will always do fine and survive -
- So why don’t you call Ross Perot and beg him to run again or Warren Buffett who opposes the pipeline - because he makes money if oil is shipped by rail?
- “Purists” suffer because they demand perfection or they stay home -
- They have no right to complain when the left creams them and their famiies -
.
- Ron Paul sends out a nice cookbook - wowed -
- but Ron Paul cannot be elected to the Senate or to the Presidency
- results talk and BS walks
- go on and be crushed by the left - play that silly-ass game -
.
Bottom line - they did steal the nomination.
My belief is that our exceptional political success was based on the founders’ understanding of the depravity of mankind. Reducing the power of government was the key to controlling the government. I don’t hear any Republicans suggesting reducing the power of the beast, therefore they have become part of the problem.
God is still in control, but he is not a Republican. I fear that many worry more about temporal power while abandoning the very source of true power. An R beside one’s name does not assure moral clarity or personal integrity. We are lost as a nation without a great spiritual revival, and no political messiah will save us.
Really? The Republican amnesty
is so much better than the Democrat amnesty
that I'm supposed to forget that I'm opposed to amnesty?
That's asinine, ridiculous, and so incredibly dumb that I've got to wonder if you really do consider amnesty to be not a good thing
or if you'll gulp it down at your Republican masters behest.
I can hear the chanting, you'd better start in too, otherwise you may be punished for missing out on your devotions:
Master Republican guide us. Master Republican teach us. Master Republican protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.
The Church that Jesus Christ Himself founded is flourishing sub rosa in China and other repressed nations. Most of that country’s staunchest believers in Christ are non-RCC.
Had to toss that in. Sorry.
First things, first!
Question: what will change by getting a Republican Senate, especially considering that they have rolled over for Harry Reid and the Democrats
on every major issue.
vote as you wish or stay home
just shut up for the next 2-4-6-8-12-14-16 etc. years
I will vote for someone; I'm through holding my nose
to vote. The last time I did that was McCain, and I wish I'd know more about his true character at the time so I wouldn't have.
unlike most people on FR I will always do fine and survive
So why don’t you call Ross Perot and beg him to run again or Warren Buffett who opposes the pipeline - because he makes money if oil is shipped by rail?
Wow — you must have actually worked to have missed the point:
There is no discernible difference in Republicans-as-a-party from Democrats-as-a-party — both are elite statists who have no problem exempting themselves from the laws they push on others.
“Purists” suffer because they demand perfection or they stay home
Who is demanding perfection!?
Seriously! Who!?
What I demand is that my Representatives represent me; it doesn't have to be perfect, but if there's a candidate who respects and honors the Constitution and wants to root out corruption in the government he's got my vote!
Is that too much to ask?
They have no right to complain when the left creams them and their families
Even if the left
has an (R) next to their name? Or does voting (R) magically make the policies of the left
a valid complaint to the voter?
Excellently stated.
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